Israeli intelligence helped thwart 50 overseas ISIS attacks

The world is a safer place thanks to Israel. 

Israel’s famed intelligence agencies helped prevent some 50 terror attacks in 20 countries, including 12 in Turkey. According to a report on Channel 12 on Tuesday, Mossad and IDF Intelligence shared intel on potential terror attacks by Islamic State (ISIS) and Iran in the past three years that led to the thwarting of dozens of attacks.

Despite diplomatic ties being severed between Turkey and Israel, intelligence was being transferred to the Muslim country even while its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was publicly criticizing Israel.

Though the network did not name any of the other countries nor cite sources for the story, in June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had used cyber-intelligence to prevent “major” attacks planned by the Islamic State terror group and others in “dozens” of countries. He said Israeli intel helped thwart an attack on a United Arab Emirates’ Etihad Airways flight.

“That plane from Sydney to Abu Dhabi was going to be exploded in midair,” he said. “We found out through our cyber activities, we found out that ISIS was going to do this and so we alerted the Australian police and they stopped this before it happened.”

“This particular incident, I can talk about,” Netanyahu said. “If you multiply that 50 times, that will give you an idea of the contribution that Israel has made to prevent major terrorist operations, especially from ISIS, in dozens of countries and most of those cases were foiled because of our activities in cybersecurity.”

Another report in June cited a senior Israeli official saying that Mossad was responsible for providing information to British authorities that helped derailed Hezbollah attempts to stockpile explosives in London in 2015.